LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

000£0131flbA 






:■■*■••■•.■:■.-. 
...■,'•■'■:.■ 




«H 



MBBKB 
IB 

nroMffliMiinnfflffl 



Hi H ' 

IBB 

H ■■ : 

JHHByaiwiBiwmiiHfl 








■MB 

■pr 



lb 



NXft 






ffiSff 
fflxm 



188 



JWOToHW 



r£* A v ♦MA" V». c£ * 







4q, 




< o 

% ♦,„•' ,0* 













%# • 



9 »^L'* "> 






















°o 








v ' • * *Ov or r • " • * v-> 

v ^Cr 



% 



"W 








^°* 








i 



THE 



^c^o-^sxo^ l^ac^ 



ITS 



History, Character, and Destiny 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE 



THE STEAOUSE UJN" I V E K S I T Y 



At Commencement, June 21, 1875. 



BY 



DEXTER A. HAWKINS, A.M., 

h 

OF THE NE W YORK BAR. 




PRINTED BY NELSON & PHILLIPS 

805 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 

1875. 



Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Satumia regna. 
Jam nova progenies coelo dimittitur alto." 



ADDRESS. 

Mr. Chancellor, and Ladies and Gentlemen : 

When invited to appear before you this year by the eminent 
scholar and Christian gentleman who presides over this Uni- 
versity, the striking growth of the Institution, and the energy, 
liberality and enthusiasm of the people in endowing and sup- 
porting it, suggested to me as a theme, — 

THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE : 

ITS HISTORY, CHARACTER, AND DESTINY. 

An eminent English writer of the last century described a 
branch of this race (the American) as "A great people formed 
into free communities, under governments which have no 
religious tests and establishments." 

In every period of history some single race or nation acts the 
leading part. The others, like the minor characters in a tragedy, 
circle around it, content to contribute to its success and share in 
its glory. Political power and the arts of civilization are for the 
time being intrusted to this one : and while playing its destined 
role in the great epic poem of human life, its sister races strug- 
gle in vain to surpass it, or yield to the decrees of Providence 
and acknowledge its superiority. 

Persia, Egj^pt, Greece and Pome, were each for centuries 
star actors of the highest excellence. They combined intellect- 
ual skill and physical force. The magnificent ruins in Asia ; 
the pyramids, temples and monuments of Egypt ; the literature, 
laws and works of art of Greece and Pome, attest this. But 
Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. Pameses and the Ptolemies ; the 
cultured worshipers at the shrine of Apollo and Minerva ; 
Solon, Pericles, Socrates and Plato ; the twelve Cesars, rulers 



4 The Anglo-Saxon Race, 

of the world; and the political and social systems which each 
represented, have passed off the stage. 

Another and a different race is now before us, one that is 
and ever has been distinguished for its energy, activity, love of 
individual liberty and of national independence. From its 
composite ancestry and character, it is now called the Anglo- 
Saxon. Our own country is, perhaps, its most promising and 
vigorous representative. The poet Cowley said to our 
fathers : — 

"... Your rising glory you shall view, 
Wit, learning, virtue, discipline of war 
Shall for protection to your world repair, 
And fix a long illustrious empire there ! " 

In sketching the history of a people whose infancy runs back 
two or three thousand years, authentic records are wanting ; 
but the affinity of languages often enables the student to dis- 
cover and bring to light the important, yet otherwise hidden, 
facts of a nation's early life. The great antiquity of the Saxons 
compels us to resort to this source of information. 

The various languages of Europe naturally range themselves 
into three distinct families or classes, the Celtic, the Gothic, 
and the Sclavonic; each having characteristics peculiar to itself, 
yet showing a latent bond of union which indicates that they 
and the races speaking them had somewhere in the distant past 
a common origin. The cultivated nations of modern Europe 
and of America are all of Aryan stock, or, as some writers call 
them, Japhetians, from Japhet, son of \N~oah ; but 4,000 years 
have made wide distinctions in language, character, and name 
between the different branches of this great mother race. San- 
skrit is, perhaps, the nearest to the Aryan, of any language now 
known ; and philological investigation traces back to that 
source roots of all modern cultivated tongues, and indicates that 
their origin is n'ot only Asiatic, but Aryan. This view is con- 
firmed by the few passages of ancient history extant upon this 
point. All the witnesses we can summon from languages, 
from history, and from monumental stones, tell us that Europe 
was peopled by three great streams of population from Asia, 
which have come to be designated as the Celtic, the Gothic, 
and Sclavonic streams or races. 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 5 

The first of these three races was the Celtic, or Keltic. The 
origin of this name is doubtful. Some look upon the stem 
u Cel," or "Kel," as a simple primitive word formed by a 
guttural and a lingual ; some derive it from the Gaelic " ceilt," 
an inhabitant of the forest ; others from the Welsh " celt," a 
covert, or " celtiad," one who dwells in a covert, or from 
" celu," to hide ; while others say that it is from the Latin 
" celare," to conceal, and was given to them by the Romans 
because they concealed their habitations in the depths of the 
forests and in caves. Another writer illustrates the name by 
three Greek words meaning to conceal something from some 
one, and infers from this the antiquity of the happy, and often 
entertaining, faculty of narrating fictions, that some perverse 
minds have thought characterized the true Celt. Another 
authority says, that this habit results simply from a desire to 
please ; and hence, unlike a certain ancient Greek, the Celt is 
said to be given to saying things agreeable rather than things 
disagreeable though true. This race was afterward closely 
pressed upon by their more powerful, warlike, and ambitious 
Gothic successors, and they gradually retired and dwindled 
away upon the western shores of Europe and the British Isl- 
ands, till few are left except the inhabitants of the coast of 
France, the extreme northern Scotch or Highlanders, the 
Welsh, and the Irish. Their emigration from Asia is earlier 
than the historic period. It occurred before the invention of 
letters, when nations had no means, save vague tradition, 6f 
treasuring up their story and handing it down to posterity. The 
arts and sciences among them were as yet hardly born ; hence 
their exit from Asia or entrance into Europe was marked by no 
monuments that might, like those of Egypt, through their as- 
tronomical inscriptions, tell to the men of science, three thou- 
sand years afterward, the date of their erection. 

Races of men have great functions to perform in the drama 
of human life upon this globe ; and when performed, they and 
their works, in the course of Providence, imperceptibly melt 
away. Their stronger and better elements are absorbed by 
their more vigorous and manly, I might say godly, successors ; 
while the weaker ones, being of no further use to humanity, sink 
away, and disappear in the sea of oblivion. The Celts, as a dis- 



6 The Anglo-Saxon- Race. 

tinctive branch of the human family, long since reached their 
climax, and are now too small in number to become a^ain 
noted. As an element, a factor, in the composition of races, 
they are of great value ; but as a separate and independent 
result they have ceased to exist. 

The Gothic or Scythian immigrations came next. These were 
a bold, roving, nomadic people, who spread themselves over the 
mountains, and into the vast forests, plains, and marshes of 
Enrope, till they occupied nearly the whole continent. This 
second stream is peculiarly interesting to us, because from its 
branches have sprung the Anglo-Saxons, the Lowland Scotch, 
the Danes, Norwegians, Germans, Lombards, Normans, and 
Franks ; not only our immediate ancestors, but also those of 
the most celebrated nations of modern Europe. They made 
their appearance in Europe, according to Homer, Herodotus, 
Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemaius of Alexandria, about seven or eight 
hundred years before the Christian era. 

The third and last great influx was the Sclavonic. This 
has occupied Eussia, Poland, Eastern Prussia, Moravia, and 
Bohemia; a race once possessed of great power and glory, 
for their very name is derived from the word " Sclava,'' 
which in the original tongue meant "fame," "glory," or 
"renown." If the Pan-Slavic dreams of the Muscovite states- 
men, to unite this whole race under one head and to develop 
and perfect it by a rigorous system of universal education, is 
ever realized, the Sclavs will have at some future period a great 
role to play. 

But the next act in the world's drama is cast for another peo- 
ple and it does not require a prophet's eye to discern that, for 
centuries to come, the Gothic nations are to lead the world in 
social, political, material and intellectual progress. Of these the 
Anglo-Saxons, from the circumstances of their history and their 
enterprising character, are admirably qualified for the noblest 
destiny. Their history naturally divides itself into four periods. 

The first extends from their origin in Asia, about the year 
1000 B. C, or the date of the Temple of Solomon, to the estab- 
lishment of their power in England, A. D. 500. 

The second, from that time to the Norman conquest, A. D. 
1066. 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 7 

The third, from this epoch to the English revolution and the 
settlement of America, A.. D. 1650. 

The fourth, from those two events to the present time. 

About 1,000 years before Christ a martial people of Aryan 
stock ruled the part of Asia about the Caspian Sea, and were 
generally designated in history as Scythians. They carried on 
wars against the Assyrians and the Medes. Some national 
difficulty, threatening if not producing civil war, arose among 
them about 800 B.C., and the younger branch, called the Sakai, 
moved west into Asia Minor, and into the part of Europe east 
and north of the Black Sea. They attacked the Persians, who 
then ruled Asia Minor, defeated Cyrus the emperor, captured 
the most fertile province of Armenia, named it after themselves, 
Sakasina, or the land of the Sakai, and made themselves entirely 
at home there. They became so celebrated that the Persians 
finally gave their name to all the Scythians, of whom, as we 
have stated, they were only a branch. 

Strabo and Pliny, at the beginning of the Christian era, speak 
of them as Sakai-Suna, or sons of Sakai, and the most distin- 
guished of the people of Scythia ; and of this province as having 
from them taken the name of Sakasina. This important fact 
gives a locality to our early ancestors, and accounts for the 
Persian words, several hundred in number, that occur in the 
Anglo-Saxon language. One writer says that Sakai-Suna became 
for ease of utterance contracted into Saksuna, and then into 
Saxon ; but this etymology of Saxon may be akin to the deriva- 
tion given in the " Diversions of Purley " of "King Pepin," 
from the Greek pronoun " donep" 

On entering Europe they, in the seventh century before 
Christ, attacked the Celts or Cimmerians the then occupants 
of the country about the river Don, drove one part of them 
back into Asia, and the others west into the center of Europe, 
and took possession of their lands. The particular rank that 
they held among the Scythian tribes in their conquering prog- 
ress across Europe is now unknown ; but we may justly in- 
fer that it was not unworthy their previous and their after 
history. We find them at the beginning of the Christian era 
inhabiting a small territory at the mouth of the river Elbe, 
composed chiefly of three provinces and three small islands ; 



8 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

and from dire necessity just beginning to learn the art of 
navigation, and to take to the sea for a livelihood. Within 
these narrow limits was contained a people whose descendants 
are now leading the world in commercial enterprise and polit- 
ical and religious liberty. 

Such is the course of Providence, that empires the most ex- 
tended and formidable vanish like tjie morning mist; while 
tribes scarcely visible, like the springs of a mighty river, glide 
on to greatness. The largest of these islands was only twenty 
miles in length ; and the most important one, and which con- 
tained the greater part of their wealth and a fine harbor, was 
still smaller. They called it Helgoland, or the sacred island ; 
for, having but one approach by sea, it afforded a safe retreat 
from their enemies, and was the favorite home of their gods. 
These, like Mars and Mercury, were the personification of man's 
baser passions, and presided over war and plundering. ISTo 
music was more grateful to them than the groans of slaughtered 
enemies ; no offerings more acceptable than the trophies of 
the battle-field. In accordance with the spirit of that age, the 
glory of arms alone was sought by those who aspired to the 
favor of the gods or the honor of men. They, therefore, carried 
on a continual warfare with the neighboring tribes, but gained 
little, either in territory or wealth, till the Roman emperors 
conceived the idea of subjugating all the northern nations of 
Europe. This was a happy event for the Saxons, and, with a 
worldly wisdom peculiar to their race, they turned it to their 
advantage, and began at once to rise in the scale of power and 
influence. 

The Germanic tribes, whose territory lay between them and 
Rome, being attacked by the more powerful and sanguinary 
legions of Italy, ceased to oppose them. Their isolated situa- 
tion secured them from clanger, and they were quiet spectators 
of the fearful struggle about them ; or else, at a favorable op- 
portunity, fell upon a weakened neighbor, struck a decisive blow, 
and annexed his lands and people to their own. This policy, 
however repugnant to the feelings of a Christian age, pervaded 
Europe at that time, and was especially practiced by the impe- 
rial tyrants of the city of Romulus, whose cruelty, inhumanity, 
and selfishness give a color of truth to their tradition that their 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 9 

founder had a she-wolf nurse. A surrame from a country 
subdued was a charm that made its generals deaf to the calls of 
humanity ; and with an ignorant and degenerate populace, it 
was the surest passport to unlimited power. 

By the middle of the third century the successes of the Ro- 
mans were so rapid and great that they threatened the total 
subversion of the liberties of Germany. To prevent this these 
wild inhabitants of the woods formed, in the year 240, on the 
banks of the Rhine, that celebrated confederation, offensive and 
defensive, in which the peculiar denominations of each tribe 
were merged in the general name of Franks ; which word, as 
well as the people it designates, has undergone changes until we 
now call it French. This confederation was a second fortunate 
event for the Saxons. 

The power of Rome now began to crumble. At home, civil 
wars were consuming the strength of the empire ; abroad, its 
German enemies not only bad many losses of property, life, 
and liberty to avenge, but they had learned the dangerous 
secret so well illustrated in the late German war, that union is 
strength ; while the Romans, like the French in the same war, 
seemed bent upon demonstrating the opposite theorem, that 
discord is weakness. Ambitious of power and wealth, Rome 
had annexed, by mere brute force, without assimilating its ele- 
ments, so large a part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, that she 
was ready almost of her own weight to tumble to pieces. 

History teaches that no nation, spread over a wide territory 
and composed of heterogeneous and discordant elements, can 
long preserve its integrity. Homogeneity and harmony are 
essential to permanent national existence; 

The advantages of the Frankish league generated others of 
like character, until the Roman Empire was overwhelmed by 
this accumulating torrent of enemies, and her western prov- 
inces were captured and parceled out among her rude spoilers, 
whose improved posterity now governs two continents. The 
Franks, from their locality, were placed in this long contest 
like a shield between the Saxons and Romans, and were com- 
pelled to employ all their resources against the imperial le- 
gions. This left the Saxons at liberty to take whatever course 
promised to contribute most to their own aggrandizement. 



10 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

A providential event, not originating from themselves, but 
from a Roman emperor who intended no such results, occurred 
at the close of the third century, which by directing the atten- 
tion of the Saxons to maritime exploits on a larger scale, with 
grander prospects, and to more distant countries than before, 
exerted an important influence upon their own destiny and 
that of Europe, and finally of America. 

The emperor Probus, harassed by the annual incursions of 
the barbarous hordes around the Euxine, now the Black Sea, 
transplanted a large body of various tribes, including Saxons, 
from the vicinity of the Elbe to that region to serve as a pro- 
tection against future inroads. But the attachment of mankind 
to the scenes of their childhood, and their ardent longing when 
in foreign lands for the country their relatives inhabit, where 
their most pleasing associations have been formed, where their 
individual characters have been acquired, and customs like 
their own exist, are feeliftgs so natural to every bosom, and so 
common to every age, that it is not surprising that these exiles 
longed to return to their native wilds. Impelled by this desire, 
they seized the earliest opportunity of abandoning their foreign 
settlements and possessing themselves of the ships lying in the 
adjacent harbors ; they formed the daring plan of sailing back 
to the Rhine, though they were more than two thousand miles 
distant by sea, with no chart, compass, or pilots, and ignorant 
of the many islands and shoals and currents of the Black and 
Mediterranean Seas. Compelled to land wherever they could 
for supplies, safety, and information, they ravaged the coasts of 
Asia and Greece. Arriving at Sicily, they attacked and plun- 
dered its capital with great slaughter. Beaten about by the 
winds, often ignorant where they were, seeking subsistence, pil- 
laging to obtain it, and excited to new plunder by the success- 
ful depredations they had already committed, they carried their 
hostility to several districts of Africa, They were driven off 
that continent by a force sent for the purpose from Carthage. 
Turning toward Europe, they passed the pillars of Hercules, 
sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean, rounded the Iberian penin- 
sula, crossed the stormy Bay of Biscay, passed through the 
British Channel, and finally terminated their remarkable voyage 
by reaching their fatherland at the mouth of the Elbe. 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 11 

This wonderful expedition discovered to these adventurers and 
to their neighbors, to all, in short, who heard and had the courage 
to imitate, that from the Roman colonies a rich harvest of spoil 
might be gathered if sought for by sea. It removed the vail 
of terror that hung over distant oceans and foreign expeditions; 
for these exiles had desolated every province almost with im- 
punity. They had plunder to exhibit sufficient to fire the 
avarice of every spectator. They had acquired skill which 
those who joined them might soon inherit. On land the Ro- 
man tactics and discipline were generally invincible, but at sea 
they were comparatively unskilled and weak. The Saxons 
perceived this, and immediately turned their whole attention to 
naval warfare. Like their .American descendants, they were 
cunning and apt at whatever they undertook. Their navy be- 
came so effective in a few years that every country of Europe 
bordering on the sea had contributed to their wealth, and they 
annoyed the Roman commerce to such a degree that large 
fleets were fitted out against them, and an officer appointed by 
the Romans as early as the beginning of the fifth centnrv stvled 
"The Superintendent of the Saxon Shore.'' These exploits had 
filled their island with wealth. 

At this early period, fourteen hundred years ago, we see begin- 
ning to manifest itself that commercial spirit which has always 
been a great element in Saxon prosperity both national and in- 
dividual. Their situation on the coast of Europe, near to fertile 
Roman provinces, yet remote enough to elude vengeful pursuit, 
and the possession of an island with a harbor so ample and yet 
so guarded as Helgoland, were in that age strong inducements 
to piracy. Their occasional service with the Romans or Franks 
— for they cared but little for whom they fought provided they 
acquired glory and booty — was admirably calculated to prepare 
them for such a life. It may be a little mortifying to our 
national pride to trace our paternity to a nation of freebooters, 
but it is always safe to admit and stand by the truth ; and besides, 
we can comfort our wounded self-esteem with the recollection 
that the Roman Republic, once so respected that to be even a 
" Roman citizen " was a notable honor, sprung from a den of 
thieves, whose character was so bad that their only way to get 
wives was to steal them. 



12 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

The poverty and hardihood of the neighboring tribes poorly 
repaid the Saxons for expeditions by land, while their sea-girt 
home and skill on the water was ever inviting them to ravage 
the ocean. Their approach and retreat were so sudden and 
unexpected that they met with little opposition, and in their 
light and swift-sailing barks they easily escaped the clumsy 
Roman vessels, or else bought immunity from the unprincipled 
commanders of Rome by permitting them to share a part of 
their plunder. The Roman government at last discovered the 
maladministration of their admirals, and ordered the chief 
officer to be punished. But, trusting to his popularity and 
strength, he with his legions and ships joined the Saxons, and 
taught them all that the most celebrated nation then knew of 
the naval and military art. He was proclaimed Emperor of 
Rome, and paid the Saxons for their assistance by giving them 
permission to plunder with impunity every province that did 
not acknowledge his power. Sixty years afterward they aided 
another military aspirant for the " Romau Crown " to gain 
his object by a similar alliance. 

Circumstances like these educated the Saxons for the em- 
pire of the ocean, and molded them, as by the plastic hand 
of Providence, to become a race that should excel not only in 
war, but in commerce, arts, knowledge, and fame, every other 
people. During the fourth century most of the nations north 
of the Rhine assumed their name and fought under their flag. 
They seduced or conquered many allies of the Franks, and at 
the fall of Rome were masters of the seas, and quite able to 
compete with any nation of Europe on the land. This ends the 
first period of their history. In a space of about fourteen hun- 
dred years, ending with the fifth century, we have seen them 
spring up from the valley of the Caspian Sea, conquer and give 
their name to a part of Asia Minor, move into Europe, pass fif- 
teen hundred miles across it, become a great power on both 
land and sea, and give their name to the country on the Elbe, 
a part of w T hich is still called the kingdom of Saxony. 

"We now come to the second period, namely, the establish- 
ment of their power in England, and its continuance down to 
the Norman conquest. Their ambition was now about to ap- 
pear in a new field. They had often visited Britain in preda- 
torv excursions, and were known as a fearless race of warriors. 



The Anglo-Saxon .Race. 13 

ready to lend their swords to any enterprise that promised a 
rich reward. Therefore, when the Britons, abandoned by the 
Roman legions, found themselves a prey to the tierce and te- 
nacious Scots and Picts, they invited two Saxon princes, the 
reputed descendants of the god Woden, to come to their assist- 
ance. The invitation was readily accepted. Their fleets 
brought an army across the North Sea, and they soon con- 
quered the enemies of their new allies. But then, instead of 
going back to the Elbe, they thought the country a sort of 
new land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey, and, as usual, 
made themselves at home in it, sent word to Saxony of the 
riches and fertility of Britain, and forming an alliance with 
the warlike Scots and Picts, whom they came to resist, they 
proceeded to reduce to subjection the Britons, whom they had 
engaged to protect. Reinforced by two neighboring tribes, 
called the Angles and Jutes, people of similar manners, cus- 
toms, and origin to their own, they subdued Britain after a 
struggle of one hundred and fifty years, divided it into eight 
kingdoms, and took the name of Anglo-Saxons. Two of these 
kingdoms, Berenicia and Deira, were afterward united in one, 
making seven, or the Saxon Heptarchy. 

England seems to have been populated at first by the Celts, 
then visited apparently by the Phoenicians and Carthagenians, 
and afterward occupied for nearly four centuries by the Ro- 
mans. It had derived from these successive inhabitants all 
the benefits that each could impart. But now it was possessed 
by a new kind of people, who had been gradually formed, amid 
the wars and vicissitudes of the Germanic continent, to man- 
ners, laws, and customs peculiarly their own, and adapted, as 
the great result has shown, to produce national and social insti- 
tutions superior to those of either Asia, Africa, Greece, or 
Rome. Our Saxon ancestors brought with them for those 
times an elevated domestic and moral character, and the rudi- 
ments of new political, juridical, and intellectual blessings. 
They laid the foundations of that national constitution, of that 
internal polity, of those peculiar customs, and of that vigor 
and directness of thought, to which the English-speaking races 
are indebted for the high social and political rank which they 
now hold. 



14 The Anglo- Saxon Race. 

But as the Saxon power increased in Britain it declined on 
the continent. Charlemagne, at the close of the eighth centu- 
ry, became emperor of the Franks. He was to their armies 
what Alexander the Great was to the Macedonians, and Csesar 
to the Romans, and Bonaparte to the French. He organized 
and led their forces against the Saxons ; and after one of the most 
obstinate and bloody wars that history records, they were con- 
quered in seven pitched battles, and lost their predominance 
on the continent, and have ever since acted a secondary, but 
not obscure, part among the Gothic States of Europe. 

Saxony is still a kingdom, though stripped of its ancient 
honors, and presents a people highly intellectual and culti- 
vated. Its nobles have been emperors of Germany, and from 
them have sprung some of the most illustrious princes of mid- 
dle Europe, princes who, by their activity, leagues, conquests, 
and love of independence, have done much for German civili- 
zation. Saxony has the honor of having given birth to Luther, 
the great reformer of Christianity ; and its chieftains of having 
supported and enabled him to carry through his. emancipation 
of mind from the shackles of papacy. The rise of the Saxon 
nation on the continent has therefore been singularly propi- 
tious for human improvement. 

The Saxons were, indeed, in their early days, without the 
knowledge and culture of letters possessed by the effeminate 
and enslaved inhabitants of Greece and Italy ; but there is 
an education of mind, distinct from the literary, which is 
gradually imparted by the contingencies of active life. In 
this, which is always the education of the largest portion of 
mankind, our Saxon ancestors were never deficient. They had 
been nurtured in the rugged school of adversity, and amid the 
wilds of Asia and Europe, or compassed by the stormy ocean, 
they had learned to meet unmoved the most appalling dan- 
gers, and had carved out for themselves a lofty name. On the 
transfer of their power to the Island of Britain they would, 
in the midst of ease and luxury, have lost fortitude of charac- 
ter had not the ambitious rulers of the Heptarchy, each striv- 
ing to extend the limits of his own kingdom at the expense of 
his neighbor's, kept it constantly exercised. Thus, their separa- 
tion into several independent States, though not conducive to 



The Aiujlo-Saxon Ran-. 15 

refinement of manners and mental improvement, preserved 
and developed to a surprising degree the practical and active 
talents of the Saxons. But as the number of kings were di- 
minished by the fortunes of war or the accidents of life, the 
people underwent a corresponding change. Peace and plenty 
brought degeneracy and inefficiency. 

A nation that both believes and practices Christianity as 
taught by our Saviour can endure prosperity ; but without some 
such active, controlling, and elevating sentiment in the mass of 
the people, nothing but the rude trials, schooling, and spurs of 
adversity can help men and nations steadily on in the course of 
improvement. The majority of the Saxons were at this period 
worshipers of Woden and Thor; and the few that bore the 
name of Christians were scarcely worthy to be called disciples 
of Gregory, to whose benevolence they owed their conversion. 
He was passing through the slave-market of Rome one day, 
when the white skins, flowing locks, and beautiful counte- 
nances of some British youths standing there for sale drew his 
attention. Being informed that the dwellers in Britain were 
all of that fair complexion, and pagans, too, his heart was 
moved, and he exclaimed with a sigh, " What a pity that such 
a beauteous frontispiece should cover a mind so void of inter- 
nal graces!" When lie heard them called Angles, "It suits 
them," he said ; " they have angel faces, and ought to be co- 
heirs of angels in heaven." The name of their province, 
Deira, was so like the Latin words De ira (" from wrath") that 
it seemed to his simple mind to imply that they ought to be 
snatched from the wrath of God. ' The harmony of their king's 
name, Ella, with the idea then floating in his mind, completed 
the impression of the whole scene, and there burst forth from 
his pious lips the exclamation, "Halleluiah! the praise of the 
creative Deity must be sung in these regions." When Gregory 
became pope, one of his first acts was to send a body of mis- 
sionaries to the Saxon princes. But the religion they taught, 
besides being corrupted almost to idolatry by the forms and 
image worship of the Church of Rome, was received by many 
of the heathen sages on the express condition that it should 
afford them greater worldly riches and honor than the worship 
of their gods of stone; hence its effect for a long time was 



16 Tlie Anglo-Saxon Race. 

little, if any, better than the paganism it supplanted. But God 
had a work for them to do, and he found them out in their 
degeneracy, and administered to them a tonic the benefit of 
which is felt even to this day. 

The vikings, or sea-kings, sometimes in English history 
called the Danes, of the same race as the Saxons, and pre- 
serving the manly virtues of the days of Hengist and Horsa, 
swarured the ocean from the countries about the Baltic, and 
invaded Britain. These restless monarchs were a scourge ta 
Europe for a century, and were universally detested for their 
cruelties. But their innate energy of character contributed an 
important element to Saxon greatness. 

Nations, like individuals, unless they are compelled to strug- 
gle in the battle of life, or are ruled by a high sense of duty, 
will fall into a moral and physical decline. The history of 
most tropical countries so clearly demonstrates this, that we 
justly assume it is a blessing rather than a curse, that man, by 
the sweat of his brow, is compelled to earn his daily bread ; for 
where the fruits of the earth sufficient for his sustenance grow 
spontaneously, his mental and moral condition approaches that 
of brutes. The Saxons were on the verge of a moral and 
national decline, when the invasion of the sea-kings, like a 
scourge sent from God to chasten them for being untrue to 
themselves, awakened their energies, and impressed upon them 
the undying love of liberty and the freedom of the seas, char- 
acteristic of that lawless race. 

Perhaps we can form a clearer idea of the influence of the 
sea-kings upon the Saxons by a glance at some of their cus- 
toms. In the families of their princes, one of the male chil- 
dren only remained at home and inherited the government; 
the rest were exiled to the ocean, to wield their scepters amid 
the turbulent waters, or lose them. All men of royal descent 
who assumed piracy as a profession enjoyed the title of king, 
though without any kingdom or visible nation, with no wealth 
but their ships, no force but their crews, and no hope but in 
their swords. Never to sleep under a smoky roof, nor to 
indulge in the cheerful cup around the social hearth, were the 
boasts of these watery sovereigns. While the eldest son ascended 
the paternal throne, the others, furnished with vessels fully 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 17 

equipped as their only patrimony, hastened, like petty Neptunes, 
to establish their kingdoms on the water. When death over- 
took them, the royal tomb of the viking was his ship. His 
lifeless form was laid out in state upon the quarter-deck, and 
his vessel with his body and arms was drawn ashore and buried. 
Some of these tombs on the coast of Norway have lately, after 
a thousand years of burial, been discovered. 

So honorable and lucrative was their profession at one period, 
that private individuals who possessed the means were eager to 
enter it. Parents were so anxious to have their children engage 
in this dangerous and malevolent occupation, that, at their 
death, they would order all their wealth to be destroyed, except 
enough to enable their offspring once to hoist their sails on the 
deep in a well-equipped vessel. Inherited property was de- 
spised. That affluence alone was esteemed which danger had 
endeared. No one was held truly noble, no one respected, who 
did not ravage the ocean in summer, and in winter return to 
his home with ships laden with booty. 

Trained in such a school, the sea-kings exhibited the ruder, 
sterner virtues in the highest perfection. To a stubborn cour- 
age and unyielding will, they added a nobleness of bearing and 
suavity of manners that gained them friends among their 
enemies, and preserved their authority in England, though few 
in numbers, for a century and a half. The most powerful 
sovereign of this line, Canute the Great, was even a patron 
of learning and religion ; and, unlike most men, the more lie 
enjoyed the favors of fortune, the greater was his morality and 
meekness of heart. He thought it not beneath the dignity of 
the ruler of six kingdoms to descend from his throne and teach 
his subjects lessons of humility. Under the labors and influ- 
ence of such sovereigns as Canute, and of Alfred the Great, 
the most distinguished king of the Saxon line, and one of the 
most remarkable men the w T orld has produced, ignorance and 
idolatry began to vanish from the island, and give place to in- 
telligence and Christianity. Churches had been built, colleges 
founded, and teachers appointed for both. The nation began 
to feel the movings of a spirit that required a wider field for 
action than the circle of this island, and the example and leader- 
ship of a king and nobility more imbued with the spirit of the 
rising Christian civilization than the Saxons. 



18 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

Britain was called by the Latin poets " a country wholly 
cut off from the rest of the world." But it was ordained by 
the great Ruler, without whose knowledge neither a sparrow 
falls to the ground, nor a change comes over a nation, that 
both for its own benefit and that of mankind it should for the 
future become intimately connected with the affairs of the 
world. Edward the Confessor having no issue, and influenced 
both by friendship for William, Duke of Normandy, and by 
admiration of his noble qualities, desired the British crown to 
fall to him. That powerful duke, while on a visit to Edward, 
had seen the wealth and fertility of the Saxon kingdom, and 
was nothing loth. When Edward died, William invaded 
England with a fleet of three thousand vessels, carrying sixty 
thousand men well equipped, and officered by the most illus- 
trious nobles of Normandy, Flanders, Brittany, and France. 
At the battle of Hastings he conquered and killed Harold, 
the Saxon king, and mounted the throne of England. 

This was another fortunate event for the development of 
the Anglo-Saxons, otherwise the physical in their civilization 
would have overborne the intellectual and esthetic ; and they 
would have been of a nature though strong, yet too coarse and 
uncultivated, for the highest eminence in an enlightened peri- 
od. As in architecture, the Doric column, though remarkable 
for simplicity and strength, is by no means so much admired 
in a polished age as the more beautiful Corinthian, with its 
fluted shaft and capital adorned with acanthus leaves. The 
polite luxury of the Norman, though of the same Gothic race, 
presented a striking contrast to the less refined tastes of the 
Saxon. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge 
piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and 
stately palaces, rich armor, gallant horses, well-ordered tour- 
naments; banquets, delicate and toothsome, rather than abun- 
dant; and wines excellent rather for their exquisite flavor 
than for their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit 
which exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, 
and manners of all the European nations, was found in the 
highest exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles 
were distinguished for their graceful bearing and insinuating 
address, for their skill in negotiation, and for a natural elo- 
quence. It was the boast of one of their historians that the 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 19 

Norman gentlemen were orators from the cradle. Saxon 
civilization without the Norman element might be compared 
to a huge Gothic structure of unhewn granite : with it, those 
majestic but naked halls, though still Gothic, are filled with 
all the refinements of art, and the comforts of social life. By 
means of the continental possessions which William brought to 
the British Crown, and through the system of diplomacy which 
afterward, in the fifteenth century, sprang up, a door was 
opened for Anglo-Saxon enterprise to wield great influence in 
the national affairs of Europe. Their power came to be felt 
at every court on the continent. Their armies gathered laurels 
in every country, and their fleets on every sea ; while they 
themselves, protected by their wooden walls, as their navy 
is called, have almost forgotten that Albion's soil has been 
thrice possessed by victorious invaders : Romans, Saxons, 
Normans. 

At this point let us take a hasty survey of the civil polity of 
the Saxons at the time of the Norman conquest. Society was 
divided into four distinct grades : — 

First. The king, who till a late period was elective, though 
birth and the wishes of the deceased sovereign were generally 
followed. 

Second. The nobles, or thanes. These were of two classes : the 
king's thanes, who held land of him and attended him at court, 
and the ordinary thanes, or manorial lords. Any man could 
be admitted to this second class of thanes who had made three 
long sea voyages in his own ship, or who owned five hundred 
acres of land and had a chapel, a kitchen, a hall, and a bell ; 
though these factitious thanes were by no means so much re- 
spected as those of generous blood. The term thane after the 
conquest was discarded for that of baron. 

Third. The freemen. These were of two classes, the socmen, 
or those who had a permanent lease of the land on which they 
lived, and the ceorles, or ten ants- at-will. 

Fourth. The slaves, which were by far the most numerous 
grade, and were also of two kinds : the household slaves and 
the farm slaves. 

The Saxons were always ruled by a king, though he had but 
little power beyond the will of the thanes. There was this rad- 



20 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

ical difference between the governments of Greece and Rome 
and those of the G-othic tribes. In the former the State was 
every thing, the individual nothing : the State was thought 
to have a perfect right to the property, liberty, and even life, 
of its citizens. In the latter the individual was every thing 
and the State comparatively nothing : all rights were thought 
to exist, to inhere by nature in the individual ; and the State 
could demand nothing from him for public use without giving 
him an equivalent. Here we find the fundamental principle 
of civil liberty ; that principle which has been so carefully 
guarded in the English and in all the Anglo-American consti- 
tutions, and which was so happily and tersely expressed by Jef- 
ferson in the Declaration of Independence. Our rude Saxon 
ancestors, though under a kingly government, had more real lib- 
erty, and a more just appreciation of the true dignity of man, 
than had the polished citizens of the republics of the Mediter- 
ranean. The legislative authority was vested in the witena- 
gemote, or assembly of wise men, which was composed of three 
classes : the prelates, the aldermen, and the wites, or men of 
wisdom. The aldermen held office during life, and were chos- 
en not on account of ' rotundity of person, or natural tendency 
to steal, but, as the etymology of their name indicates, for their 
age and experience in affairs. To obtain a seat in the witena- 
gemote, unless by reason of nobility, a man was required to 
possess forty hides of land, or about five thousand acres. The 
members were by law secure in their persons, in going to and 
returning from Parliament, " except they were notorious 
thieves .and robbers." At their elections suffrage was oblig- 
atory and compulsory, and failure to attend and vote w T as 
punished as a neglect of public duty. 

For the administration of justice, and the preservation of 
good order, the community was divided into counties, hun- 
dreds, and tithings. The latter consisted of ten householders, 
and the presiding officer was called a ti thing-man. Each 
member of the tithing was, in a certain degree, responsible for 
the behavior of the other nine members. Crimes committed 
within the precincts of a tithing were charged against it, unless 
the members of the tithing discovered the offender, or could 
get twelve men, three from their own number, and three from 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 21 

each of three adjacent tithings, to declare upon their oaths that 
they believed the tithing innocent. This seems to be the origin 
in English history of trial by a jury of twelve men, one's peers 
or equals. From the tithing there was an appeal to the hun- 
dred, from that to the county, and, in important cases, from that 
to the king. In these courts the weight of evidence was de- 
termined not so much by the character of the testimony as 
by the number of witnesses, and when this would not decide 
the cause they had recourse to the ordeal. The ordeal was of 
two kinds: boiling water tor the common people, and red-hot 
iron for the nobility. If the accused took up a stone sunk to 
a certain depth in the boiling water, or carried the red-hot 
iron a certain distance without burning his hand, he was pro- 
nounced innocent ; if otherwise, guilty. Sometimes cold water 
was used, and then if the accused sunk, he was innocent; if he 
swam, guilty. Another peculiar feature of their criminal juris- 
prudence was that all punishments were by fines, one third 
of which went to the judge, and the rest to the king. 

It was thought highly conducive to the ends of justice to 
give a part of the fine to the judge, that he might be the more 
vigilant in ferreting out crime. Every thing, from the king's 
head to the tooth of a slave, had its price. By the Anglian 
law the value of the king's head was £1,300, that of a prince 
£650; a bishop's or an alderman's £350, a sheriff's £175, a 
clergyman's £87, and a ceorle's £21. A wound of an inch 
long under the hair one shilling, on the face two shillings ; and 
whenever the criminal refused or was unable to pay his fine, 
he was given over to the injured party or his relatives, to be 
punished as they thought best. Church and State were united, 
both while the nation was pagan and when it became Chris- 
tian. And the same body, the witenagemote, raised revenue 
for both, and down to the year 960 settled all disputes among 
the clergy. Theft and robbery were so common, until restrained 
by the laws of Alfred the Great, that all transfers of property 
above the value of twenty pence were invalid unless executed 
in open market and before witnesses. 

Convinced that intelligence in the rulers was essential to 
liberty and happiness, every one who possessed two hundred 
acres of land or more was required to send his children to 



22 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

school ; and inability to read and write incapacitated a man 
for important office. Their language was noted for its sim- 
plicity, strength, and expressiveness. The primitive words 
were chiefly monosyllabic, and the others were formed by 
uniting two or more of these, giving to each syllable a mean- 
ing. This feature shows itself especially in their proper names, 
of which, till the eighth century, each individual had but one, 
and that often indicative of his character or disposition. Some 
of them translated would read lion-man, tiger-man, lamb-man, 
noble-man, war-man, blacksmith, woodman, acre-man, etc., 
etc. Surnames were very rare till after the Norman conquest, 
but William introduced them to build up and perpetuate an 
aristocracy. He also changed the law of inheritance so as to 
make the real estate descend to the oldest son, while, by the 
Saxon law, the land was divided equally among all the male 
heirs of the deceased. 

The present English language, composed as it 'is of words 
from at least twenty-six different languages, is yet five eighths 
Anglo-Saxon, and in these five eighths are found nearly all the 
terms of common life. We scold, swear, pray, and utter our 
proverbs in Saxon. Proverbs are to a tongue what the knots 
are to a pine-tree, they contain its marrow and essence ; and 
when all else is rotted away, and gone back, as it were, to 
dust, the very fatness and essential oil of the language live in 
its proverbs. The great expressiveness and force of their lan- 
guage was caused by its abounding in specific terms, most of 
which we still retain, while our generic terms are from the Latin 
and Greek. To inflict a castigation is Latin ; while to beat, 
baste, bite, bruise, box, brain, cuff, fist, cane, cleave, clip, cut, 
carve, cudgel; to prick, pound, nail, nip, goad, hide, maul, 
lick, strap, drub, knock; to foot, kick, gripe, grind, poke, 
nudge, elbow, ding, dint, rap, strike, whip ; to wound, thrust, 
stick, thwack, thrash, smite, smash, squeeze, swinge, swingle, 
and switch, about fifty in all, each giving the kind of blow 
laid on, are Anglo-Saxon. It is the Saxon element which 
o*ives such beauty and power to the style of the English Bible, 
and of Shakspeare, Milton, Byron, and in our own country, 
Webster. That vigor and utility of thought which character- 
izes the Saxon race requires this style for its expression. It 



The Anglo-Saxon Race 23 

is terse, concise, clear, and strong. Every American scholar 
should cultivate it. In this age of steam, electricity, and 
science, we have not time for the ponderous sentences and 
choice Latinity of the style of Dr. Johnson. 

The prevailing vice of the Saxons, one which ran through 
every rank of society from the king to the meanest slave, 
and one which their descendants in too great a degree inherit, 
was beastly drunkenness. The ale-house was among them al- 
most a sacred place, and quarrels arising there were more 
severely punished than elsewhere. The lust for strong drink 
might justly be called the national curse of the Saxons. The 
dram-shop or corner groggery is, I believe, still an institution 
in every Anglo-Saxon country. When they conquered the 
Medes, in the sixth century B. C, Astyages, the king, gave 
them a great feast, made the leaders all drunk, slew them, and 
then fell upon their army and drove it out of his kingdom. 
Drunkenness was the greatest obstacle to their development, 
physical, intellectual, and moral, and may even be enumerated 
as one of the chief causes of their defeat by William of Nor- 
mandy, for they spent the night before the battle of Hastings 
in riot and excess, while the more prudent Normans devoted 
it to sleep and prayer. 

From this sketch of the political and social condition of the 
Anglo-Saxons at the time of the Norman Conquest, let us pass 
to the changes introduced by the Normans. Surnames and the 
law of primogeniture have already been spoken of. But the 
most important innovation was the feudal system. This sys- 
tem had already spread over the continent, but its influence 
was hardly felt across the British Channel till William the 
Conqueror divided the island among the officers of his army, 
and made them feudal lords. Under this system all land 
w T as supposed to belong to the king as superior lord. The 
barons held of him, the knights of the barons, the esquires 
of the knights, and the farmers of them. These last paid 
their rent in the products of the soil ; the others, in personal 
services, as military attendants. The greatest % deference was 
paid to superiors; and woman, who before, by Saxon husbands 
and parents, had been bought and sold, was now treated with 
the highest respect, nay, I might say, almost worshiped ; for 



24 The Anglo-Saxon Race . 

the Christian knight bowed the knee to his " faire ladye," and 
would suffer as much to vindicate her alleged ineffable beauty 
against all doubting knights, as he would to redeem the u Holy 
Sepulchre" from the hands of the infidel. 

Ruled by these sentiments, the social condition of Britain 
rapidly improved. Law, before a rude tradition, now became 
a science, to excel in which required much learning; hence, for 
several centuries, the clergy were the lawyers. Another 
change was the introduction of the Norman language, and the 
attempt to make it supplant the Saxon. It soon prevailed at 
court, and among the higher classes, and would have uprooted 
the Saxon had not the native strength and expressiveness of 
the latter been too powerful for the polished periods of the 
former. After a long struggle the two coalesced, forming our 
present incomparable English ; a language equal to the 
German for poetry and metaphysics, not excelled by the 
French for precision, and superior to both in copiousness and 
variety. 

After the Norman Conquest, the next great event in Anglo- 
Saxon history is the English revolution. The wars with 
France, and the bloody civil contest between the houses of 
York and Lancaster, had broken the strength of the nobility ; 
and, at the close of the sixteenth century, they were no longer 
able, as in the days of King John, to compel the crown to re- 
spect the rights of the people. The lords, unlike the sturdy 
Barons of Runnymede, who in 1215 extorted from the king 
the Magna Charta, saw in silence and submission royalty de- 
clare itself absolute. At this period there was a general tend- 
ency of power throughout Europe to centralization. The 
republics of Italy, Florence, arid Genoa had fallen ; the 
democratic spirit was crushed. The sentiment of personal 
independence, and personal liberty, which characterized the 
Gothic tribes, especially the Saxons, and which has con- 
tributed so much to the efficiency of moderate civilization, 
was not then strong enough to oppose the strides of 
despotism. 

From the effect of the Crusades and the consequent reorgan- 
ization of society, the old feudal and municipal liberties were 
lost, and new governments had arisen, more regular, centralized, 



The Anglo-Saxon Race. 25 

and despotic. But no period exhibited a greater physical and 
mental activity than the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The 
Cape of Good Hope was doubled, America discovered, gun- 
powder and printing invented. Painting in oil had filled 
Europe with masterpieces of art, and engraving had multiplied 
and diffused them. The literary and scientific world was 
illumined by such lights as Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Milton, 
Kepler, Descartes, and Bacon. The Reformation had achieved 
the freedom of human reason, so that at the same time that 
political and civil liberty was crushed in Europe, the right of 
free inquiry and general emancipation of mind prevailed also 
and brought on a healthful reaction. 

The Anglo-Saxon race naturally and logically, from the ele- 
ments that composed it, was the first to assert the rights of 
man. A struggle began in England between the people and 
mind on the one hand, and the king, nobility, and wealth on 
the other. The result of the contest, as might be expected 
with a people possessing the courage, energy, and perseverance 
of our Saxon ancestors, was in favor of liberty. 

But the Anglo-Saxon race would by no means have been able 
to act its rightful part in the grand drama of the world, if con- 
fined to the narrow limits of England, or restrained by kingly 
rule and the law of primogeniture which concentrated wealth 
in the hands of the few. A wider field, a freer government, a 
more equal distribution of property, were essential to the de- 
velopment of their energies and the growth and ripening of 
the fruits of that sentiment of personal independence, of indi- 
vidual liberty, which to them was coeval with their existence 
as a nation, or even as a tribe. The settlement of America, and 
her separation from the mother country at our Revolution, gave 
them these. The one opened a new world for their enterprise, 
and made every man the architect of his own fortune; the 
other relieved them from an .hereditary aristocracy , a State 
Church, and the burdens which monarchy and manners and 
customs, the relics of a decayed system of civilization, the 
feudal, entailed upon them. Their history for the past century 
is our history and that of our mother country. It is familiar 
to ns all. The Declaration of Independence, the War of the 
Revolution, Washington and the cluster of great names that 



26 The Anglo-Saxon Race* 

make the most brilliant constellation in our political firma- 
ment ; the Articles of Confederation, the Federal Constitution, 
that most perfect political document that ever emanated from 
the mind of man, and under which we have prospered beyond 
reasonable desire ; the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and 
the wonderful expansion of the British empire through her colo- 
nies and conquests till it compasses the globe, are all known to 
the boy of the free common school. I need not recount them. 
And last, but not least, the great war for the rights of man 
which our generation, by the blessing of God, has had the singu- 
lar good fortune to wage, has removed from our country, from 
all countries where our speech is the mother tongue, the last 
great relic of barbarism, and the last great bar to Anglo-Saxon 
progress, human slavery, and permits the American Anglo- 
Saxon race to follow without hinderance its instincts of freedom 
and human rights, and to achieve its high destiny. 

" The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends, 
And empire rises where the sun descends." 

There is an old Anglo-Saxon proverb, " Blood will tell." It 
tells constantly in their history, and will continue to tell till 
the race has done its work. The strength of this strain of 
blood is manifest iu the fact that it crosses with all cognate 
races, and takes up and absorbs their good qualities without 
losing its own identity, or failing to manifest and obey its own 
characteristics. It survived the contact with the Medes and 
Persians without becoming enervated. It sustained itself in a 
thousand years' journey with other Goths across the continent 
of Europe to the mouth of the Elbe, uncrushed. It mingled 
with the Romans and Franks, and the older Celts of Britain, 
without loss. It swallowed up and incorporated into itself the 
vikings and Danes, but threw off their freebootery. It came 
out all the purer and better from passing under the Normans. 
In America it unites with the Celt, the German, the Swede, 
and the Norwegian, and still remains the same, only improved. 
These other races, and the languages they speak, in a few gen- 
erations disappear in the Anglo-Saxon American, who is now, 
and bids fair to be for centuries to come, the best composite, 
harmonious development, the highest perfection of humanity. 



The Anglo-Saxon Race, 27 

The two great branches of this race have put aside war in a 
memorable international difficulty, and settled by arbitration, 
in a council chamber at Geneva, grave and annoying questions 
that among other races would have deluged a continent in 
blood. The judgment pronounced by a peaceful umpire has 
been performed with a promptness and precision that is an 
example to all other races and nations. 

That arbitration and its results are an epoch in the history 
of man. It calls to mind the prophetic lines of Yirgil uttered 
just nineteen hundred years before : — 

" Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna. 
Jam nova progenies coelo dimittitur alto." 

This race carries its language, its laws, its institutions with 
it around the world, and by dint of their good qualities makes 
them prevail. Australia is becoming a new Anglo-Saxon con- 
tinent ; New Zealand, a new Britain. Africa is being encir- 
cled as with a string of pearls by Anglo-Saxon colonies. A 
few thousand countrymen of the Christian and Saxon soldier, 
Havelock, rule one hundred and fifty millions of East Indians ; 
and to them China and Japan have opened their doors. Two 
hundred and fifty years ago they numbered but three millions, 
a hundred and fifty years ago seventeen millions, fifty years 
ago thirty-four millions, to-day ninety millions : in America 
forty millions, in England thirty millions, and in the rest of the 
world twenty millions. 

This race does not possess the polish and vivacity of the 
French, but, with a rougher exterior, it has more real nobleness 
of heart, weight and fixedness of purpose. Inferior in ability to 
analyze, to split hairs between west and north-west sides, to 
determine with mathematical precision the difference between 
nothing and its next-door neighbor, it far excels in power of 
generalization, in ability to seize upon the strong points, the 
great landmarks of truth, and to look at things with a practical 
eye. Without the sprightliness of the Italian, or the cold 
taciturnity of the German, the Anglo-Saxon occupies the 
golden mean, his risible not sufficiently excitable to endanger 
his buttons, nor yet so inflexible as to delay his laugh, like the 
Hollander, till the day after the joke. Energetic, shrewd, cal- 



28 The Anglo-Saxon Race. 

dilating, he will hew out a home and make a fortune where 
another race would dwindle away or get a bare livelihood. 
In ingenuity and powers of invention he would seem by some 
crossing of the blood to have inherited the skill of Archimedes, 
who burned the enemy's ships about Syracuse with his sun- 
glasses, and that of Daedalus, the personification of Grecian 
art and mechanics, who escaped from the Cretan tyrant on 
wings of his own construction. He does not, like his Teutonic 
cousin, spend years meditating upon some abstruse principle of 
metaphysics — he is too much, of a utilitarian for such fruit- 
less investigations — but he gives his thoughts to the more im- 
mediate well-being of society. He sees a world full of things 
to do and but a short time to do them. From the school-room 
he plunges directly into business or politics. Of too active a 
temperament to be burdened with flesh, he is nervously think- 
ing how he may make his own fortune excel that of his neigh- 
bor, or his nation surpass all others in wealth and power ; or, 
perhaps, like his ancestors of the sixth century, he may be de- 
vising a scheme to relieve an adjacent country of a rich slice of 
territory and annex it to his own, without absolutely violating 
the law of nations. An ardent lover of the rights of man, he 
is a turbulent subject, but a good citizen. In war he has not 
the wild enthusiasm which inspired the soldiers of Xapoleon, 
but he goes into the contest w T ith a fixed will to win. He 
may not storm a redoubt, but he can fight a three days 7 battle. 
Physically, the Anglo-Saxons are hardy, muscular, active, and 
energetic ; mentally, clear, cool, shrewd, enterprising, and ambi- 
tious. From the necessities of their very nature they are friends 
of political and religious liberty, and enemies of tyrants, whether 
spiritual or temporal. Their mission demands for its fulfill- 
ment free government, free and universal education, a free 
Church, and one that recognizes man as a being gifted with 
reason and a free will. If the race be true to itself, if it fulfills 
the high destiny which the Divine hand seems to have marked 
out for it, then, when its cycte shall have been completed and 
its record made up, future races will look back upon its period 
as the brightest in human history. 



f^ 



THE 




.%01^0-^sxo^ las* 



ITS 



History, Character, and Destiny. 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFORE 

THE SYKACUSE UNIVEESITY, 

At Commencement, June 21, 1875. 



BY 



DEXTER A. HAWKINS, A.M., 

OF THE NE W YORK BAR. 




PRINTED BY NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

805 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 

KJ^, 1875. 




t o*..i^.*o /\^%\ /^^4^°o /. 




^°«* 





y"*"*. 

























V-o 1 



.■*<?* 















o • * • A <x 




°A * e »° A V> 





^°* 




^ 









•^.^ 



,5°^ 




+ sJ> 



:* v + 
















^ 







^9" 



V9 



•^ 








S>* ^ o 






'ol? 













°o 



<> ' • . * 




X ***£k: » ^-&k\ c»*.i^% 









6* ^ 





iv. ^ « 



j. -"* 



,^°* 





















l«" 











'^^ 

***■ 




_ 



Wfc 

m 






warn 



mam 






Mm 

Mum 



K, 



m 



KSS 



mm 



mmmnm 



m 



m 



m 



M 



^m 



SB 



m 



wm 



